Abstract

The skin and contiguous mucosal surfaces define the primary locus of interaction between host and micro-organisms. In this review, we focus on the previous terminnatenext term immune system in the mucosa, which manages to deal with invading pathogens, the mechanisms that organisms have evolved in order to circumvent this primary defensive barrier and, finally, potential therapeutic manipulation of the previous terminnatenext term immune system that was the focus of meeting at a Euroconference/Workshop on “Novel Strategies of Mucosal Immunisation through Exploitation of Mechanisms of previous termInnate Immunitynext term in Pathogen–Host Interaction”, which was held in Siena, Italy, November 2002.